Ada Yardeni
21 x 21 cm (8.25 x 8.25 in.); 86 pages; original artwork; full color; bibliography; softcover
Both entertaining and educational, this book illustrates the main signposts leading to the invention of the alphabet, with full-page color illustrations and palaeographical, historical and linguistic information. The letters of the alphabet have a common ancestor. The ancient Canaanite language evolved in Egypt in about the second millennium BCE, and split into different alphabetical systems, mainly Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic and Arabic. The illustrations in this book are based on the forms of the letters as they appear in ancient inscriptions.
“This is a clever book. . . . It deals with the growth of the letters of the alphabet from the early Semitic languages and the particular relationship between Hebrew, English and Arabic. The full-page color illustrations come with a black and white key, tracing the evolution of the original pictograms.”